On July 31, 1891, the founders of the Woman's Century Club hold their first meeting. The club is founded by suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) and several other prominent women for the cultural and intellectual development of its members and for social service. The purpose is to "civilize" their rapidly developing city and to promote "intellectual culture, original research and the solution of the altruistic problems" of the era, which the founders consider the "woman's century" because of the many advances for women since the early 1800s ("An Illustrated History").
The founders, according to the club's current (2011) website, were:
- Alice Jordan Blake (first woman to graduate in law from Yale)
- Annie M. Brown (came from New York around Cape Horn in 1866)
- Mary B. Cochrane
- Alsora Hayner Fry
- Sarah Kendall, M.D. (one of Seattle's first woman physicians)
- Julia E. Kennedy (Seattle's first woman superintendent of schools, who hosted the club's first meeting at her home)
- Elizabeth Mackintosh (arrived in Washington in 1866; served as enrolling clerk in the Washington Territorial Legislature in 1869, the first woman to occupy such a position in the country)
- Harriet E. Parkhurst, pioneer and humanitarian
- Celeste Langley Slauson (founder and director of the Seattle Conservatory of Arts)
